 Hi everyone, welcome back to the channel. Before we get started, I encourage all of you to please go check out our Teespring store. We've got a lot of merch right now. A lot of you have asked for shirts and an art of one merchandise, so we do have that available, so please go check that out. And also go check out our Patreon channel. We have a lot of exclusive content there for our members. A lot of good stuff, so take a look. So ever since we gracefoot on this planet, the nature of man has been to compete against other man. Competition is in our blood, which actually makes sense if you think about it, because that is the rule of nature. If you don't win, you die. Thankfully, we're in generally more civilized days, and we have found more constructive ways to compete by way of sports and contests. And perhaps one of the highest procedures of these competitions is the World Olympics originating back in ancient Greece. Surprisingly, however, other than a handful of arts, the martial arts have been largely absent from the Olympic Games, namely karate and kung fu. While that recently changed, and for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, karate has finally been accepted as an event. So in this video, we're gonna take a look at how it will be represented and how the competitions will be structured. In recent history, there are only six combat style events that are a regular part of the World Olympics. They are judo, taekwondo, fencing, boxing, freestyle wrestling, and Greco-Roman wrestling. It is a bit strange to me that there isn't a wider variety of arts included, especially considering how large Wushu and karate competitions are around the world. Now, while Wushu has yet to be approved, karate was finally included in the roster of events at next year's 2020 Summer Olympics. Now, the bid to include karate actually started back in 1970 when a man by the name of Jacques Delcourt from the IKU, or International Karate Union. Delcourt has been a part of previous organizations with the goal to unify karate on a global scale. Now, these organizations understood that there were too many arts to blend together and unify as one art, but they did realize that they could unify the rules of competition and hold international contests. Now, after a few organization changes and mergers, the WKF, or World Karate Federation, was formed in 1990, and is currently the only organization the International Olympic Committee recognizes. After many years of proposals and efforts, karate was finally accepted and is an event in the 2020 Summer Olympics. It will be held at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo, which is an arena that was built for the 1964 Summer Olympics to house judo and has since been used for many events, especially martial arts. Now, while it is a part of the 2020 events, karate has unfortunately been omitted from the 2024 events in France. This has been met by outrage and a disappointment of many who had dreams of competing. So in the meantime, 2020 is what we get, so hopefully they make the most of it. Olympic karate is basically separated into two competitions, kata and kumite. A total of 80 competitors will make its Olympics. 60 will compete in the kumite portion and 20 in the kata portion. The events are also divided equally in male and female divisions. Now in kumite, there are three weight classes for both the men and women's event. The men's classes are categorized as under 67 kilograms, under 75 kilograms, or over 75 kilograms. Women's weight classes are under 55 kilograms, under 61 kilograms, and over 61 kilograms. So this means that there will be three male winners and three female winners in kumite and one male and one female winner in kata for a total of eight potential gold medals. Combatants from around the world are all welcome to compete as long as they adhere to the rules and regulations of the World Karate Federation and will qualify based on performance from a variety of world competitions that have been going on since the announcement. The host country, Japan, automatically gets one competitor in each division. Now the rules for kumite are point-based, which has drawn some criticism from some martial arts circles. Point-based fighting is often panned as a watering down of traditional arts into a mere sport. Both judo and taekwondo in the Olympics are often the target of this sentiment and many fear that the same watering down will happen to karate. Many karate has preferred knockdown karate competitions in which the objective isn't to score points but to literally knock down and knock out your opponent. Kyokushin is one of the many arts that excel in this type of competition. Now you can learn more about that in our history of Kyokushin, it's a three-part series. I highly recommend checking that out. Now the debate does go on. Some feel that point-based karate diminishes the integrity of the art, while others feel that the knockdown karate is just too dangerous. Regardless of which side of the fence you're on, I am personally excited to see it in the Olympics at all and I hope that it can prove itself in order to return as a future event. So the point system is as follows. Each match goes for a maximum of three minutes. The objective for each combatant is to score eight more points than their opponent. The first person to score eight points above the other is declared the winner. If the three minutes run out and before that happens, then the fighter with the most points will win the match. In the event of the tie, the victory will go to whoever scored the first point. Now points are earned by striking your opponent in the head, body, or after a takedown. A single point is awarded for a closed-handed punch or strike to the torso, side, back, neck, or head of the opponent. Two points are awarded for a kick to the torso, side, or back, and three points are awarded to kicks to the head and neck, or when delivering at least one strike to a fallen opponent after you've performed a takedown. Strikes below the belt are strictly forbidden and there is a strict set of penalties for any violation. For any infraction of the rules, there are four levels of penalties that are applied. The first is simply a verbal warning to the offending contender. If a second violation occurs, there is a second warning followed by awarding the point to your opponent. A third time will result in your automatic disqualification and the victory is given to your opponent. Now if there is a fourth penalty issued, which is usually for excessive force or repeated violations, that will result in an automatic one for your opponent at a score of eight to zero, which strips your team of any points achieved. If the first violation is a serious one, such as a deliberate attempt to hurt your opponent or excessive force, then the maximum penalty might be applied immediately. Also, knocking down your opponent without attempting to strike might also result in the penalty. And speaking of excessive force, we come to the other part of the controversy. Full contact is not allowed. Judges expect contenders to exhibit an expert level of control and discipline over their techniques. So what is controversial about this? Well besides the fact that many field karate should be full contact in order to retain the integrity of the art, there's this notion that's going around that says that no contact is allowed at all, which is really winding a lot of people up. Now this was interesting because there seems to be a contradiction of information. Some sources say that light contact is allowed, while other sources are saying that no contact is allowed, just sharp techniques that demonstrate skill but don't land. I'm not sure where a lot of this information is coming from, but if you consult the official 2020 Tokyo page, it says athletes must land a series of blows on the target area of their opponent's body with explosive energy and also with precision. Attacks with good form, power and control earn between one and three points. So the specific phrase must land indicates that you do contact your opponent just with control and not full power with the intent to harm them. Now this is pretty standard in point competition as well as aligning within the rules and regulations of the World Karate Federation. If you aren't doing full knock down karate, then there's no point in using full contact. Get it? No point? Never mind. As far as the uniforms go, all competitors must wear a plain white gi, the standard karate uniform. Other colors will not be allowed. Also, regardless of your rank, each competitor has to wear either a red or blue belt with matching sparring gear. Now these colors will be designated at the time of competition by the board's decision. This uniformity makes it easier for the judges to designate points to a specific combatant much like the blue and white uniforms in judo. Now the Kata event will have 10 competitors in each demand and women's divisions. Kata's will be awarded points from a panel of judges based on many factors that demonstrate their skill and understanding and form being demonstrated. Also from the website, it states key factors include the strength, speed, rhythm, balance and power of strikes and kicks, the solidity, clarity, force of movements and the proper expression of the meaning of each technique with beautiful flowing motion. Competitors are required to demonstrate movement that is both slow and fast, weak and strong along with focus and concentration. Now I think the inclusion of Kata's is awesome for those who don't want to fight but they still want to represent their art with a solo performance. However, this too comes with a point of contention. There is a limit to the number of Kata's recognized by the World Karate Federation and eligible for competition. So far only Kata's from the arts of Gojiru, Wada-ru, Chito-ru and Shodokan are allowed. I can understand both sides of this. To include all Kata's from all styles opens up a floodgated difficulty for judges to appropriately award points to versions or variations they might not be familiar with. But at the same time, it does exclude a lot of styles of practitioners that would like to compete. And so we have the Olympic Karate in the 2020 Summer Games. Now, even though there's a lot of controversy and criticism surrounding the events and I myself am personally disappointed to hear that it has been denied for 2024, I am happy to see it represented in at least some form on a global stage. There are so many politics in the martial arts that sometimes it makes me sick but this is a chance to use Karate as a positive example of national pride, dignity and dedication to a lifelong art. I am personally excited to see this and I really do hope it is successful enough to open a door for future inclusions and I hope all of you do too. So if you made it this far in a video, hopefully you've liked it and hopefully you like all our content. We're trying very hard to bring you the topics that you are asking for. We get a lot of requests for art-based videos specifically but a lot of topics come from our audience and we want to cater to all of you. The order to do that, we do need your help. We do have a Patreon page to help us produce this channel because to be honest right now, this is not a full-time job. There's only two of us. It's just me and Zach that do this channel full-time. And we do this channel as full-time as we can but we have both worked two full-time jobs in addition to this channel which is pretty much a full-time job in itself. It has totally gotten to the point where my life is starting to forget what I look like. So we want to allocate more time to this project. Currently we only get to film about once a month so we produce episodes in batches. So on our Patreon channel we have multiple tiers available for different memberships and they come with different bonus access materials. So you get bonus content that we don't release on the channel. Also, we've set up a couple of goals because we do have a goal to actually produce more and what that means is if we hit that goal, we can actually dedicate more shooting days a month. So not just one day but maybe we can do two, three, four more days a month and then we can start hiring people to help us, hire us with researching and script writing. So that way we can do these arts faster. It takes months but if we can get it to the point maybe we can bring it to you once a month or sooner just a much better pace. So imagine what we're bringing you on a one month pursuit scale now and multiply that by multiple days. Imagine what we could bring you then. So please go check out our Patreon page. We love you guys. We couldn't do this without you. This channel started off as an experiment and you've proven to us that there is something here that's a community to grow and we would be honored to have you as part of our official family. So please go check us out and we love you guys and we will see you next time.